Being a new parent isn’t easy.
Appearing on The Late Show on Wednesday, Maggie Gyllenhaal discussed her first feature film, The Lost Daughter, and the ways in which it explores the sides of motherhood that don’t often get spoken about in public.
“I think, when we’re little, our survival depends on our parents,” says Gyllenhaal in the clip above. “Our fantasy that they want nothing more than to take care of us — because our actual survival depends on it.
“When in fact, they’re us. They, like, also want to have a drink sometimes, and they also want a night with their husband or wife, and they also want to work, and they want many things like we do.”
Gyllenhaal explains that there’s a part of us that struggles to talk about this side of parenthood.
“I love my children, but it’s a very complicated experience. And mostly, if it doesn’t fit inside this very narrow space that we’ve agreed we’re allowed to talk about, then they say something’s wrong with you. But in fact, how can you be a parent as anything other than a beginner, right?” she continues.
“If we can include terror, real anxiety, despair, along with the heart-wrenching ecstasy on either sides of the experience that we’re allowed to talk about, I think it’s comforting to sort of go, ‘You’re not the only person that ever had these feelings.'”